Vision, Mission, & Core Values
What are teaching kitchens? A learning laboratory for life skills.
What do we do? Teach everyone to eat, cook, move, and think more healthfully.
We seek to answer the question “What can we do together that we cannot do on our own?”
We believe…
That the healthiest foods can be the most delicious. And the most sustainable. And affordable. And easy to cook. Did we mention they can also be the most fun to eat and prepare?
Food is the connective tissue of social structures—from family to friends, schools to workplaces, growers to consumers. We honor heritage, revitalizing diverse foodways, and upholding health-promoting food traditions from across the world.
That every person deserves to learn how to live their best life. We are committed to growing an inclusive, equitable, and accessible movement of eaters and teachers from diverse backgrounds and organizations who can disseminate these critical life skills to every person, in every community.
Mindfulness drives long-term health outcomes. That means learning how to eat, cook, move, and think more healthfully—for life-long change.
The healthcare system does not only need to diagnose, treat, and manage disease—it must center preventive health around food.
Evidence and transparency matter. We are science-based at our core—and are constantly learning, sharing, and evolving with our members.
In evaluating and disseminating successful models of innovation. For us, this means: there is no one-size-fits-all approach to a teaching kitchen; that to meet the challenges of both our pre-COVID and post-COVID realities, we are committed to building teaching kitchen models both in-person and online; and that openly exchanging what we learn in collaboration with others is fundamental.
In working across disciplines. When the medical and culinary communities join forces to address societal health challenges, we can—at long last—build a culture of health for all. We may not speak the same language or use the same tools, but there’s power in our common goals to increase quality of life and catalyze action—toward both individual behavior change and wide-scale systems change.
